Mourners pay tribute to sisters who died in car crash

MORE than 600 mourners paid tribute yesterday to two sisters killed in a horrific car crash.

MORE than 600 mourners paid tribute yesterday to two sisters killed in a horrific car crash.

Rachel Putnam, 20, and her sister Elena, 18, died in the tragedy along with Rachel's boyfriend, Mark Gardiner.

And just 24 hours after Mark was laid to rest at Cullen in Banffshire, the sisters were buried in the same cemetery.

Many of the mourners had attended both services.

Both girls were students at Glasgow University whose chaplain, the Rev Stuart MacQuarrie, said: "It is not death that unites us here today but love.

"And I have seen that love in action in these last days in this community."

The funeral at the Auld Kirk heard the girls had been born in Italy but came to Scotland after their parents separated.

They died on July 14 when a Citroen Saxo being driven by Mark, 22, collided with a works van near Portsoy, Banffshire.

Mr MacQuarrie said Elena had turned down a place at prestigious Yale University in America so she could join her sister at Glasgow. And Rachel had just returned from a placement at one of Europe's finest business schools in Italy.

He added: "It is obvious to me that Elena, Rachel and Mark were loved."

A lone piper played as the sisters' coffins were carried from the church before they were buried in Cullen and Deskford Parish Cemetery.